BDCA Appoints Two New Board Members
The board of Business Development Corporation of America, a publicly registered non-traded business development company, expanded the size of its board from five to seven members and appointed Lee Hillman and Dennis Schaney as directors.
Late last year, Benefit Street affiliate BSP Acquisition I was appointed as the new external advisor of BDCA. Benefit Street is the credit investment arm of Providence Equity Partners and co-sponsored the Griffin-Benefit Street Partners BDC, which closed in 2016.
Hillman has served as president of Liberation Advisory Group, a private management consulting firm, since 2003. He also serves as chief executive officer of Performance Health Systems, a specialty health and exercise equipment distributor, and is the former CEO of Bally Total Fitness Corporation. Hillman currently serves as a board member of several publicly traded entities, including Lawson Products, Adelphia Recovery Trust, and HC2 Holdings.
Hillman received his bachelor’s degree in finance and accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in finance and accounting from the Booth School of Business of the University of Chicago. He is a certified public accountant and former audit partner with Ernst & Young.
Prior to his retirement, Schaney served as managing director and head of high yield and leveraged loans at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, as well as the co-head of Morgan Stanley Credit Partners. He is a former managing director and global head of fixed income for Credit Suisse Asset Management and served on the asset management’s executive committee and the management committee for Credit Suisse. He was also a rating officer for Standard & Poor’s Rating Services and currently serves on the board of Griffin-Benefit Street Partners BDC Corp.
Schaney holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Bridgeport and an master’s degree in finance from Fairfield University.
BDCA primarily invests in senior secured loans, and to a lesser extent, mezzanine loans, unsecured loans and equity of private middle-market companies. As of 3Q16, BDCA has $2.2 billion in directly-owned Investments, according to Summit Investment Research. The company commenced its initial public offering in January 2011 and raised $1.9 billion before closing the offering in April 2015.
